I mean, it doesn’t make me as stabby with rage as “Body Swap,” but it’s close.

And things started off so well with the boys mid-argument over who was the funnier Stooge – Iggy or James Williamson Curly or Shemp. Team Curly, clearly. It is charming and brotherly and a nice nod to the kinds of silly debates that you know have helped pass the time and miles of road over the years. They check into a motel and the conversation shifts to the text message from James – a St. Louis cop that we’ve never seen or heard of before but who apparently saved their lives that one time. He needs help and they owe him, so. Dean makes to leave on a beer run and here’s where things start to get rickety. He asks if Sam needs anything, but no, he’s good. Dean pushes. Is Sam sure? He did just gank a Hell Hound and they still have a minefield ahead of them. Because if Sam isn’t okay, Dean is ready for a tag out and do over. Sam calmly reminds him that Kevin doesn’t even know what the next two trials are. Whatever it is Dean is worried about – stop. Sam will be ready.

Dean leaves and Sam unpacks. He hears a scratching at the door, and when he opens it, there’s a Doberman sitting outside. The dog cocks its head, looks up at Sam, and comes right on in. Sam checks the red spiked collar, but there are no tags. Dean returns just moments behind the dog. Sam meets him outside. Dean needs to know it wasn’t Sam’s fault. “She just showed up at the door. Didn’t track in any mud, just wanted her belly scratched … I figured, maybe she could stay tonight and we’d try to find her a home tomorrow? With a hopeful / scared little boy grimace, Sam opens the door. What Dean sees is not a dog, but a dark haired woman in a low cut black dress – and red spiked dog collar – reclining on the bed.

“She can stay the night.”

Sam pulls a knife from his belt, but she’s not a shapeshifter. She gets a more accurate read on people in her other form. And approaching guys in seedy motel rooms can get complicated. She’s a familiar. Her name is Portia and she belongs (yeah, we’ll get to that in a minute) to James Frampton. Dean questions how that can be, since their buddy James isn’t a witch. Maybe not when they met him, but after the last case they worked on, James decided he wanted to learn more about that world. “It became the center of his life.” Let Dean take one more pass at this, because apparently writers Brad Buckner & Eugenie Ross-Leming have decided that we, the viewers, have collectively suffered a head trauma and need to have everything repeated back to us. You hear that noise? That’s the sound of the wheels about to come off the bus. “So, you’re telling me that James the cop became a witch because of us.” Portia gives Dean a hard look, and apropos of nothing, announces that he doesn’t like dogs. SLANDER! LIES! Dean does cop to being not so much with the witches. “They’re always spewing their bodily fluids everywhere. It’s creepy, you know, it’s down right unsanitary.” Portia gets in his face, reminding Dean that James is a detective with a spotless record. She finishes her verbal smackdown and they stare each other down. Dean is the first to break eye contact, mumbling, “That was incredibly hot.”

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Yay. Sex and cheeseburgers Dean. We haven’t seen that tired characterization in a while. Yay.

And then we cut to a swanky private Not!Warts witches club – because that’s a thing – for a throwaway scene between James and some guy called Spencer. Who is clearly the villain, btw. Can we get back to the Shemp / Curly debate? I WOULD REALLY LOVE TO HEAR MORE ABOUT CLASSIC DEPRESSION ERA COMEDY.

Portia and James have a fight about the Winchesters, because PS, she’s the one who called them. He doesn’t think it’s any of their business, but she knows he has no one else he can turn to. James reluctantly tells them about the horrible, vivid dreams he’s been having. People die in them. They’re torn to bits. James can feel himself killing them. He always wakes up, still in his own bed, but the murders are real. He shows them his white dress shirt covered with blood. He doesn’t know what’s happening to him. Dean proposes that James has been hexed by an angry rival witch who is forcing him to kill. James gives it the briefest consideration before rejecting the idea. He’s never heard of such a thing. Double yay. An episode whose plot requires everyone in it to be idiots. Just can’t get enough of those.

Sam looks into the deaths and confirms that all of the details James gave them are accurate. Dean makes a run to the Chinese market for chicken feet before pointing out that they’ve never actually seen Bobby’s witch killing spell work. It’s not a sure thing. Not that anything ever is, but Dean would just like to have the odds in their favor. Sam wonders if he’s concerned about the spell working … or Sam messing up the trials. Aaaaaand, here’s where the wheels come fully off the bus and it skids down the highway on its axles throwing off sparks and bits of metal in its wake. Sam and Dean proceed to have a tense slap fight that completely ignores and negates the two wonderful moments they had in the previous episode. Sam thinks Dean wants to take on God’s Trials because he doesn’t trust Sam not to screw it up?

Dean does trust Sam and he knows Sam is up to the task. “I mean, you are the second-best hunter on the planet.” Dean wants to be the champion because he’s afraid that Sam WILL succeed – read: DIE. Which would leave Dean alone – AGAIN – only this time, there’s no Bobby or Lisa to keep him from driving Baby off a pier. And knowing that Sam sees a light at the end of the tunnel, Dean would rather sacrifice himself – AGAIN – to allow Sam a chance to live his life demon free. Sam knows this BECAUSE DEAN TOLD HIM IN THE PREVIOUS EPISODE.

Sam talks to the detective investigating the murders and gets stonewalled. Portia takes Dean to Not!Warts where the only thing they learn is that no one believes he’s a Wiccan from Detroit and he’s allergic to cats. And, scene. They also discuss the relationship between a witch and a familiar. “The familiar finds the master and they become inseparable. The master and the familiar, there’s an unbreakable bond.” This is where the bus skidded to a stop and burst into flames.

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I hope I don’t have to draw you a schematic illustrating exactly what’s wrong with a woman of color wearing a dog collar casually calling a white guy master.

Portia leaves Not!Warts to go home and chain James to the bed. As one does. She hates doing it, but it’s a necessary precaution. James believes he’s innocent, but there’s the chance that he isn’t. Either way, he has to do the right thing. They snuggle and Portia wishes for it to all be over. Then they have the sexy bondage times. I know some people were squicked by the implied bestiality, but honestly, all that registered for me was that Buckner and Ross-Leming WASTED A PERFECTLY GOOD LOVE SCENE ON TWO RANDOM CHARACTERS, NEITHER ONE OF WHICH ARE SAM OR DEAN. I mean, as bad as “Route 666” is, at least there’s that!

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But, we had to have the sexy times so that James would lower his guard long enough for Portia to get inside his head and find ‘proof’ that he’s innocent so she can stop Dean just in the nick from torching him. And so that Dean can act like a 12-year-old when he finds out they had the sexy times. Although Sam does give him credit for not making any bestiality jokes. At least out loud. The more I watch this episode, the more I hate it and we’re only half-way through. SIGH.

There’s some community conspiracy blah blah, Dean does more stating the obvious for the benefit of viewers who can’t pluck meaning from context, and astral projection. Which Dean acts like he’s never heard of, EVEN THOUGH IT’S A KEY PLOT POINT IN “DEATH TAKES A HOLIDAY” because apparently BUCKER AND ROSS-LEMING DON’T WATCH THE SHOW and the script supervisor HAD JUST GIVEN UP AT THIS POINT MUCH LIKE I HAVE WITH THIS RECAP BECAUSE WE BOTH JUST WANT IT TO BE OVER.

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Dean’s theory was mostly right. Spencer was planting the images in James’s mind and helping a resentful police colleague build a case against him. It was Spencer’s revenge for Portia choosing James over him – and for the two of them going “all Bella and Edward” and flaunting community rules. Their arrogance and entitlement was too much. Only total ruination would satisfy. Spencer throws a knock-off Cruciatus Curse at James and immobilizes the boys with a bit of his mind magic. He makes them see the most painful moments in their lives. Sam sees himself falling with Adam into the yawning hole that opened up in the cemetery in Lawrence. Feels the fire and torment of the Cage. Dean sees Mary. Her ghost smiling at him before she sacrificed herself in “Home.” Her belly ripped open and her body in flames on the ceiling of Sam’s nursery. Feels the hooks piece his body and hears himself screaming Sam’s name.

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Because these visions don’t so much support Dean’s eventual “the only way we’ve made it through it all is by hanging together” statement so much as they reinforce his point that they know where the road ends – with one of them dead. Which, again, ignores that they resolved all this in THE PREVIOUS EPISODE, GOD! Anyhoo, canine!Portia attacks Spencer and breaks his hold on James and the boys. Dean molotovs Spencer with Bobby’s witch spell, and the chicken feet must have been plenty chilled this time. Spencer dies and James and Portia leave town to start a new life. Godspeed. They boys hit the road back to the bunker and here it is. Here is the sole reason they had the snit fight in the motel room – so Dean can mea culpa in the car about trust while Sam tries to hide the physical toll the first trial has taken and the blood he’s suddenly coughing up like a 12-foot-tall lady of the camellias.

The end, good night, and now let us never speak of this episode again.